Greek Prime Minister Hasn’t ‘Given Up’ on Trans-Atlantic Ties |
As Europe wakes up to the reality of a nakedly transactional United States, its leaders are more openly declaring the need for increased defense spending and a broader shift toward what is known as strategic autonomy—a wonkish term for a country or region to be able to set its own priorities. One country that has long been talking up such a path is Greece, a NATO member that spends more than 3 percent of its GDP on defense in part because of its perceived threat from neighboring Turkey. Greece is also responsible for around a quarter of global shipping, making it especially reliant on international trade.
On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a center-right and liberal politician who has served as Greece’s prime minister since 2019. We discussed the trans-Atlantic relationship, how Greece navigates the Trump administration, the country’s challenges with immigration, security, and much else. Subscribers can watch the full interview on the video box atop this page or download the free FP Live podcast. What follows here is a condensed and lightly edited transcript.
As Europe wakes up to the reality of a nakedly transactional United States, its leaders are more openly declaring the need for increased defense spending and a broader shift toward what is known as strategic autonomy—a wonkish term for a country or region to be able to set its own priorities. One country that has long been talking up such a path is Greece, a NATO member that spends more than 3 percent of its GDP on defense in part because of its perceived threat from neighboring Turkey. Greece is also responsible for around a quarter of global shipping, making it especially reliant on international trade.
On the latest episode of FP Live, I spoke with Kyriakos Mitsotakis, a center-right and liberal politician who has served as Greece’s prime minister since 2019. We discussed the trans-Atlantic relationship, how Greece navigates the Trump administration, the country’s challenges with immigration, security, and much else. Subscribers can watch the full interview on the video box atop this page or download the free FP Live podcast. What follows here is a condensed and lightly edited transcript.
Ravi Agrawal: I have to start with the trans-Atlantic relationship. U.S. President Donald Trump seems to have pulled back from his recent demands to buy Greenland. How much has that incident—that drama that we all saw in Davos last month—hurt the relationship between Europe and the United States?
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: First of all, let me point out, as we discussed a couple of years ago, that President Trump was right when he pointed out that Europe was not contributing its fair share when it came to defense spending, and that we had essentially outsourced the security of our continent to the United States. Greece was an exception to the rule. We’ve been spending more than 2 percent of our GDP [on defense] for many years, due to our peculiar geographic and geopolitical challenges. We’re now above 3 percent. But most of the continent only woke up to the realization that we need to take our strategic autonomy more seriously since President Trump was reelected to the White House.
So I think that in that sense, this “rude awakening” was necessary in order for us to take our own security seriously. And we have made significant progress with the commitments to spend significantly more within NATO but also a general understanding that regardless of what happens in NATO, Europe as a whole needs to develop its own defense architecture. I’ve been calling for more European defense spending for quite some time. And I’m quite happy that most European leaders have realized, maybe slightly later than I would have wanted them to, that this is now becoming an indispensable necessity for Europe.
RA: I agree on the defense issue, and we’ll come back to it. But this is about more than that. On an issue like Greenland, Stephen Miller, the president’s deputy chief of staff, has called international law “international niceties.” The United States has also overstepped when it comes to international law on Venezuela, for example. How does that resonate in a place like Greece?
KM: Greece has been a firm believer in international law ever since the post-World War [II] international security and defense arrangement was put into place. We are a nonpermanent member of the [United Nations] Security Council. And when it comes to our regional geopolitical disputes, we always put forward the fundamental premise that they can only be resolved by reference to international law, and in particular, the law of the seas. But at the same time, we’re not naive. We do understand that in these turbulent times, it is important to build our own defense and security capabilities. So without changing our fundamental premise, we do recognize that international relations have become, in a sense, more transactional and that we need to build our own strength. Speaking for my country: our own economic strength, our own defense strength, our own soft-power strength in terms of completely rebranding a country that was hit very, very harshly from the financial crisis. So, we will continue to maintain that the rules-based international order is in our broader interest while not being naive about a changing world, which, frankly, as a medium-sized European country, we cannot really influence.
RA: Well, let’s talk about strategic autonomy then. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech in Davos seemed........